OSU students offer plan for downtown Lancaster

OSU partners with Lancaster

Apr. 21, 2013

Written by

The Eagle-Gazette Staff

LANCASTER — Twelve Ohio State University students have been working with city and economic leaders this semester on a master plan for the city’s downtown.

“I feel like I have a team of research assistants working with me,” said Kate Ervin, executive director of Destination Downtown Lancaster/Special Improvement District.

The students are part of the university’s city and regional planning program and spent the semester studying economic development, vacant property strategies, parking, marketing and other elements of city planning. The group will complete a 100-plus page document on the downtown, with photographs and diagrams, as a final project.

The class worked under auxiliary faculty member Chad Gibson, who is the senior planning officer of Upper Arlington. Gibson said Lancaster Mayor David Smith approached the OSU Knowlton School of Architecture with idea of the class helping the city.

“The biggest thing we discovered is that there is a lot of potential in Lancaster,” Gibson said.

To reach that potential, the downtown vacant buildings must be filled, he said.

“One of the ideas we came up with is a vacant-property registry,” Gibson said. “The owners would register their vacant property and pay a fee when registering. If the property is still vacant after a certain period of time, the owner would be fined. But they would get some of the fine back when the building is occupied.”

He said similar registries have been successful in other cities.

Ervin said the data the class collected can be used in conjunction with a 10-year master plan DDL-SID released earlier this year. The plan shows the city with a performing arts center, several restaurants, housing, office spaces, a large marketplace, office incubator and a conference center/hotel.

Former DDL-SID Executive Director David Uhl said the plan could cost $100 million to implement.

The students will present their master plan during a public meeting from 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday at 108 W. Main St.